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Ludovic Chabant pointed us to his personal blog post, where he provides some how-to and packaged script shells for firing off. It's a simple trick—grabbing a copy of Chrome's SQLite-based search engine database, and re-copying it on a new system—made even more simple for non-coders, and synced up with Dropbox. You don't really need any scripting knowledge to get them working, though you might need to fix one or two things in your system to get them working properly.

First off, if you're using Windows, you'll need access to PowerShell. PowerShell is a free download provided by Microsoft, and for Windows 7 users, the good news is that it's built in. If you're on XP or Vista, you'll need to download the right package for your system. Once you've got PowerShell installed, most users will need to take one more step, as PowerShell isn't allowed to run scripts with much system-wide power by default.

As explained over at ITExperience.net, you'll need to fire off one command inside PowerShell to give Chabant's script some breathing room. First, though, make sure you launch PowerShell as an Administrator: type "PowerShell" into your Start search box (or find it in your Start menu), then right-click on it and select "Run as Administrator" (assuming you're on Vista or Windows 7). When faced with a command prompt, enter this bit and hit Enter:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

Most of us can do that without too much worry, as we don't download and run PowerShell scripts on a regular basis. Still, if you're a bit concerned about leaving a door open, you can substitute RemoteSigned in for Unrestricted so that PowerShell can only run your own scripts.

Moving along! Scroll down to the bottom of Chabant's post and find his "handy ZIP file," which you can download and extract, preferably into a new Dropbox folder. If you're on Windows, you can execute the .cmd files for "push_chrome_search_engines" to grab Chrome's database and "push" it into a file in that same folder. On your other systems, you can then "pull_chrome_search_engines" to "pull" those search keywords from the Dropbox folder and place them inside Chrome's own database. Note: Yeah, the wording is a little tricky, especially for those who aren't used to Git terminology. But think of it in terms of what you're doing with the Dropbox cloud: "pushing" local files into the cloud, then "pulling" them back into your Chrome settings.

If you're on a Mac, you can fire off Chabant's scripts using the Terminal from the folder where you extract his ZIP file, which contains the SQLite library you need. Need help? We've previously written up a command line primer for beginners, including the how-to on firing off a .sh script like the one used here.

When you've successfully run the "push" script on a system, you can then open up that same Dropbox folder on another system, run the "pull" script, and you'll have all those search engines you took the time to customize (or just let Chrome auto-add) available right away. Handy stuff, especially for Chrome addicts. We're not sure if this would work on Linux, though it looks like it would—if you give it a try, let us know the details in the comments.